James webb telescope location plus#

Related: How many satellites orbit Earth?įollowing in the footsteps of ESA's Herschel infrared observatory, the Webb telescope will be located nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth at the so-called L2 point, according to NASA's JWST website. So the best place for an infrared telescope is out in space, as far as possible from the Earth and all its unwanted sources of heat. On top of that, the Earth produces its own infrared emissions via heat radiation, which tend to swamp the fainter astronomical sources. But infrared poses problems for Earth-based telescopes, because much of it is blocked by our planet's atmosphere, according to the University of St Andrews. (Image credit: NASA)įor many astronomical objects, including star-forming regions, exoplanets and the most distant galaxies, these very long wavelengths are more useful to astronomers than the visible spectrum.

James Webb, after whom the telescope is named, was NASA administrator in the 1960s.

James webb telescope location plus#

So it won't be able to see green or blue light, just orange and red - plus a wide range of longer wavelengths beyond that. Hubble spanned all of this, plus a little way into the ultraviolet at shorter wavelengths and infrared at longer ones.īut the JWST will primarily be an infrared telescope, optimized for 600 to 28,000 nm, according to NASA's JWST website. Ordinary optical telescopes see in the same part of the spectrum as our own eyes, covering a range of wavelengths between roughly 380 and 740 nanometers (nm), as Live Science has previously reported. Related: How are asteroids and space debris detected before they hit Earth? While it is both those things - with more than two and a half times the diameter and a hundred times the sensitivity - at its heart the JWST is a different type of instrument altogether. NASA is keen to emphasize that Webb isn't simply a bigger and more powerful telescope than Hubble. Nevertheless, the scientists involved in the project believe the results will more than compensate for the time and money invested in it.

Building the telescope cost nearly $10 billion, almost doubling the estimated cost since 2009, according to the U.S. Webb was originally planned to cost half a billion dollars and be ready for launch in 2007, the Atlantic reported.However, these estimates turned out to be over-optimistic, given the enormously complex and innovative design of the spacecraft. (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images) 25, 2021, Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket launches with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope onboard, from the ELA-3 Launch Zone of Europes Spaceport at the Guiana Space Centre at Europes Spaceport, at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.

(NASA announced in September 2021 that they would not rename the mission, reported.) It was way back in 2002, almost 20 years ago, when Webb's name was first applied to what had previously been referred to as the 'Next Generation Space Telescope.' That decision was later called into question as JWST's launch neared, with many scientists arguing that Webb participated in discrimination against gay and lesbian NASA employees during his time as an administrator for the agency, and therefore should not have his name affixed to the high-profile observatory, according to Live Science sister site. Webb, who oversaw the creation of the Apollo program in the 1960s, according to NASA. The telescope is named after one of NASA's early administrators, James E. The James Webb Space Telescope, known as Webb (like 'Hubble'), is operated primarily by NASA, which is providing the bulk of the funding, with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) as partners.